It's fairly common for these kinds of nonsense figures to include: 1) the cost of doing stuff they would've needed to do anyway, like fix misconfigurations or patch security holes; and 2) salaries for regular staff who would've been paid the salary either way, like a sysadmin who had to take some time away from posting on Slashdot to respond to the incident.

The logic of ambit claims will goes like this (figures are examples only): the most revenue (not profit) we have ever taken in an hour is 1.5M, we were off-the-air for 2 hours (rounded up of course), therefore we 'lost' 3M. For that 2 hours our company-wide expenditure was 0.5M which was not bringing in money and therefore a 'loss'. Total 3.5M 'lost'. It, of course, completely ignores the massive spike in payments during the few hours after their system came back as the vast majority of payments that c

We're done now. The boys will serve their time (presumably 9 months with good behaviour) and then move on with their lives.

note: it's not that in theory Paypal couldn't take a civil claim, just that in the UK it isn't generally the done thing. Apart from anything else, it wouldn't be worth it for Paypal. The boys almost certainly have little in the way of assets, so Paypal wouldn't recover much (and it would cost them a bundle in legal fees). On top of that, they would just end up loo

Because it serves to keeping the American population docile about our terrible justice system. If you think about the (far too many) inmates in prison as people who may be serving time unjustly or at least disproportionately to their crimes, you might get upset and expect change. If you think of them as animals who are getting raped as a form of penance to society, then you can blissfully go back to living in ignorance.

Under US libertarian policy, money is freedom. Only through property ownership does one obtain rights. So if someone takes all your money, they take all your freedom. If someone takes $8,000,000 from you you don't have (and never will) then you are a slave for life. And in the US, court decisions can't be discharged in bankruptcy, so you will owe it the rest of your life, no matter what you do. But take prison, and 8 months later you are free for the rest of your life. One is a life sentence, the othe

I believe the primary difference in the Mastercard and PayPal DDOS attacks is that they weren't just tryng to take down a website, but rather they attacked the domains that provided APIs to process payments. They were literally trying to disrupt business transactions.

They were not successful in fully bringing down either.

I also object to calling any criminal hacking "hacktivism". A legal protest can be more effective. They didn't advance their beliefs or causes, though they did break the law.

It's possible they considered this to be civil disobedience. If so, the whole point is that you do what you believe is right, knowing it's illegal, and accept the consequences of your actions. If they believe they were doing the right thing then fair enough, but there should be no whining about the jail time.

For those outside the UK, they will serve 50% of their sentences if they behave while inside.

I have zero sympathy for this kind of hacker, but that's a lot of time for a DDOS that apparently they didn't even execute if I read the charges right.

Attempt a felony, be charged with a felony.

Join in a criminal conspiracy, provide support for the conspiracy, go down with your co-conspirators.

It doesn't matter whether the conspiracy succeeds or fails. Traditionally, it didn't matter whether you expected things to be taken as far as they were or end as badly as they did. There are echoes of this in the felony murder rule.

You don't want to be caught driving the getaway car in a holdup where someone gets shot. You don't even want to be the guy who suppl

I am being serious about this when I ask. What is so great about Anonymous? I have read plenty about them, but don't get why so many people I know go on about how great of hackers they supposedly are. Furthermore just so you know, the people I know who do this obviously know nothing about computers and they say they really want to join them. Also forgive me if I am missing something, but they just seem like a bunch of hacker wannabe script kiddies. I don't think any self respecting group of hackers would go

In some ways it's like ALF or ELF—anyone anywhere can be Anonymous. This makes it impossible for LEOs to track down all participants before they act. It means there's little hierarchy of control, so actions of some may not be condoned by others under the banner. Doing something and claiming to be Anonymous gets significantly more attention than being just anonymous but gets participants more severe punishment because those prosecuted are implicitly being blamed for the previous actions of others under

In most the the truth will out and the fact that 'Anonymous' doesn't really exist as a group, will out and the action you took in the name of 'Anonymous' will be purely those you are charged for and if proven convicted for.

In the US with the whole abortion that is the Department of in-Justice, any sort of weird crap interpretation will come to life and be thrown into the case. It'll only be a matter of time until the self aggrandising arse holes decide that each and every single individual request of a D

The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend or a good guy. Just because someone like Assange doesn't like the US government, or banks or whoever else you hate, doesn't make him a saint. Just because Anonymous decided to support WikiLeaks didn't make them saints either.

They attacked PBS for crying out loud, just because PBS aired a documentary that tried to present both sides of the Assange debate.

That isn't supporting any ideal of transparency. That is acting childish.

PBS Frontline Documentaries are some of the most respected in the world. Making silly assumptions without having any knowledge isn't supporting transparency either.

Trying to block someone from free speech (especially truthful speech) out of fear is the exact polar opposite of what Assange and Wikileaks supposedly stand for. But that is exactly what Anonymous was doing in going after PBS.

Terrorizing people into not speaking the truth is not something that should be celebrated or endorsed.

When multiple people are convicted of different things, listing their punishment as a "total" serves purely to make the story more lurid and, thus, to make whatever possibly reasonable point the author intended seem more likely to be incorrect. "Two of the three people credited with hacking financial networks received jail sentences, the longest for 18 months" would still be silly wording but at least not a blatent attempt to exaggerate.

Yes. I'm reminded of this [guardian.co.uk] from the Guardian style guide: "Never invent a big figure when a small one will do. Totting jail sentences together ("the six men were jailed for a total of 87 years") is meaningless as well as irritating."

"Hacker" was co-opted to mean "criminal who happens to use a computer as anything more sophisticated than hitting someone over the head with one and mugging them."

Then Anonymous came along and started doing things which were clearly not simple crimes. "Hacktivist" was starting to sound different to the public. "Hackers are cybergangmembers and bad, but 'Hacktivists' have principles and are maybe good!"

The powers that be clearly realized they were losing the war of words, so now "Hacktivists" is goin

That's the way the Marxist scum media in the U.K. try to fool the public into thinking that criminals are getting longer sentences.Stuff like "Jewellery gang get a total of 25 years" and then you find out there are five of them, so the average sentence they got was only five years.

If the government wanted to get rid of crime, they could do it in a couple of months tops - just massively increase the length of sentences, and put all the new criminals into prison camps. Tent cities. The bare minimum of food, no heating, no T.V., just selected books and that's it. Twenty years for burglary, twenty years for mugging, execution for murder, etc. Crime would drop by 99% as soon as the criminal scum realised they couldn't get away with it any more.

Didn't the victorians try that before? I think I seem to remember from history class it didn't turn out so well.

Although I actually think it's a long sentance personnally (if it was up to me I'd leave it at a sentance with no jail time since not being able to get a job and turning to crime might be enough for a first time)... I think it's short for the political setup we're seeing come through; Daily Mail readers who say lock them up and throw away the key. As such I'd rather this sentence length than life sentances or whatever's going round in the USA.

This is screwed up. Even the worst dictators in history have served less time. In 1923 Hitler attempted a coup with something like 600 men. He served just 9 months in jail. This was before coming to power legally (though what came later was contrary to the law of the land from my understanding of what happened). You would think threatening a countries leaders would get you more time than some minor protesting. Yes- this is protesting. It might be criminal although it is no worse than blocking traffic.

They should have gotten another 6 months for being stupid and careless enough to get caught. Criminal negligence? Lol. It's reeeeeeally not hard these days to not get caught if you're a hacker. Just don't go around bragging, telling your little hacker friends your real name and where you live, or connecting to stuff through non-proxy or TOR means or letting anyone else use your computer. But of course Anonymous is like 100 copies of Kim Dotcom coming off a photocopier so ego comes before anonymity. Iro